President Donald Trump basked in the glory of his own achievement in the Middle East on Monday, perhaps cognisant of the fact that he may never have a better day in office. Greeted with a hero’s welcome by Israelis across the board, he told members of the Knesset that “against all odds, we have done the impossible and brought our hostages home”. He also laid out his stall for a future in the Middle East that is both peaceful and prosperous. “It is more obvious than ever”, he told Israeli lawmakers, “that the productive and responsible nations of this region should not be enemies or adversaries. You should be partners, and eventually even friends”.
Achieving that goal will take even more effort than the hard diplomatic graft that led to Monday’s seismic events in both Israel and Gaza. Trump raced to Tel Aviv to celebrate the return of Israeli and Israeli-American hostages after two years of unimaginable terror in Gaza. But having rolled the dice, first by unveiling his surprise 20-point peace plan for Gaza last month, and then by travelling to the region even as the hostages were still being processed by Hamas for release, he was able to double down at the very moment that his historic gamble paid off.
His speech to the Knesset in Jerusalem lasted just over an hour and made it apparent that he views the end of the war in Gaza as a truly transformative moment for the region, but also for his own presidency. “Decades of jihadism and antisemitism have not worked, they’ve been a disaster” for the Middle East, Trump said. “From Gaza to Iran, those bitter hatreds have delivered nothing but suffering and death”, he said.
In its place he foresees ancient enmities being overcome, as a growing number of nations sign the Abraham Accords normalising ties with Israel. He outlined ambitions than run much further than just securing Saudi or Syrian backing for those agreements. “We can forge new peace treaties with Arab countries in the region and Muslim countries beyond the region”, he proposed, including Turkey, Indonesia, India and Pakistan on his laundry list of possible signatories. “You’ve won”, he said, directly addressing Benjamin Netanyahu. “Now you can be a little nicer, Bibi, because you’re not at war any more”.
He promised that Hamas will be disarmed and that Gaza will be “immediately demilitarised”. When and by whom, he did not disclose. He promised that wealthy Arab states are waiting in the wings to rebuild the territory, claiming “the wealthiest and most powerful group ever assembled” were ready to help Palestinians “turn for ever from terror and violence…and concentrate on building their people up”. Again, the details of how that might occur were not revealed, but on this triumphant day, even sceptics might concede that anything is possible.
Trump speaks to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem (Photo: Saul Loeb/Pool via AP)In a direct challenge to Democrats back in the United States, Trump flayed former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, accusing them both of demonstrating “hatred” towards Israel. He claimed that even by signing the internationally backed Iran nuclear deal in July 2015, Obama “chose Iran over…Israel”, and Trump proudly defended his decision to withdraw the United States from the arrangement three years later.
He told the Knesset that Biden “did nothing” to advance peace in the region or to end the war in Gaza, and during a session in which Israeli lawmakers enthusiastically chanted Trump’s name, the US leader even publicly called upon President Isaac Herzog to offer Netanyahu a pre-emptive pardon on the corruption charges that he faces.
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The American leader will return to the United States having been described by the Speaker of the Israeli parliament as a “colossus” and “the President of Peace”. Trump said his opponents had got him wrong, and dismissed the notion that he is leading an increasingly authoritarian government. “People thought I was going to be brutal”, he said. “My personality is all about stopping wars, and it seems to work”, he insisted, despite his bellicose, ongoing deployment of troops on the streets of Chicago and Portland.
For Trump’s image-makers, the last 24 hours have been manna from heaven. They can point to a President delivering on his pledge to end the war in Gaza, and publicly calling on Special Envoy Steve Witkoff to make resolving the conflict in Ukraine his new number one priority. They can portray Trump – the foreign policy amateur – as running rings around Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris. With a year to go before next November’s mid-term elections, Jewish American voters may rally around the President, and Democrats find themselves again totally outpaced by him.
To be sure, numerous pitfalls abound: the US government is still shut down, with some Republicans in Congress increasingly queasy about the political fallout. Maintaining peace in Gaza may prove complex, and disarming Hamas will be a very steep and dangerous mountain to climb. Trump’s own record of support for Israel’s military action in Gaza throughout the first five months of his presidency still enrages pro-Palestinian Americans.
But with the hostages’ release behind him, Trump is now ascendant. He may never have another day like Monday, but he will be trading off it for months, possibly years to come.
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